Hosed and exposed.
Sean O’Malley coughed up his bantamweight crown to Merab Dvalishvili in the UFC 306 pay-per-view (PPV) main event last weekend at The Sphere in Las Vegas, because “Suga” had no answer for “The Machine’s” wrestling-based offense.
But former UFC bantamweight champion Henry Cejudo, who also got dominated by Dvalishvili when they went to war at UFC 298, insists O’Malley was never going to pan out as champion and may have gotten lucky against Aljamain Sterling at UFC 292.
“What can I say? I predicted these things,” Cejudo said on his Pound 4 Pound podcast (transcribed by MMA Junkie). “Sean is not accustomed to going five rounds, and he is not accustomed to people on his legs, and I just felt like — I still go back and say, ‘Hey, that fight with Aljamain Sterling, that was a fluke too.’ Aljamain was still in that fight, and people thought I was just hating. No, I’ve been in there with Merab. I did a whole lot better than Sean did when I fought Merab. I mean, I took down Merab. Like, Merab is lucky that I had that groin injury.”
The Cejudo camp claims this injury is to blame for his Dvalishvili loss.
“Merab was lucky that I was hurt in that fight,” Cejudo continued. “Moving forward, if Sean O’Malley is willing and wants to fight this troll who’s the true king of Arizona, well then here I am. But if not, I’m making my way back down to 125 pounds because I’m not going to waste my time. I personally would love to fight him. I think with all the trolling that we have done to each other, we both live in the same city, but I just don’t think that he’s going to want to fight me particularly right after this performance that Merab did to him.”
O’Malley is expected to be out of action until late 2025, according to this statement.